>> Because its their job to hate people who take advantage of others in matters of trade?

> Very true. A wholly free market is actually quite toxic, as a certain Adam Smith noted. Especially when it's dishonest.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes! Exactly this.

the FTC "simply substituted its own judgment for a private firm's decision as to how to design a product to satisfy as many users as possible."

Because that is what we pay them to do. And there is a very good reason; because private firms measure customer satisfaction through the lens of maximization of profit (fairly short run profit in the case of apps), and the FTC measures it through imperfect objective analysis of the rational self-interest and informedness of the transaction participants. Gee, here's a surprise: Those two measures don't always agree, and sometimes, when they are far enough out of whack, it actually increases GDP in the long run if you limit the freedom of people to engage in inefficienty transactions.

A really good example of such potentially inefficient transactions is children, who do not understand how much time and effort it costs to acquire money, are in the throes of video game passion and a screen pops up saying, "Win More, Only $3.99! Buy Now!"

Joshua Wright, an FTC commissioner who dissented...

A market filled with efficient transactions increases GDP in the long run relative to a market with less efficient transactions. So, tell me, Joshua Wright; do you hate the economy? Do you want a lower GDP? Do you want our corporations to lose money? Do want our wealthiest stockholders to have to buy slightly smaller Gulfstreams? Answer me, Mr. Wright: Do you hate America?

So Cabinet-level officials such as the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence have committed perjury during Congressional testimony or been held in Contempt of Congress before?

No, they haven't - every other time officials of that level have been about to be held in Contempt of Congress, the official caved and supplied Congress with what was being asked.

Have you heard of Ollie North?

Neither side wants this to go to court, and both sides know it. The AARC wants a settlement they can point to for high pressure settlement letters to other defendants, and the car companies want a non-revokable license for these devices. I'd give it a 90%+ confidence that this will result in an undisclosed settlement within a year, and while we won't know the number they settle for, I'm guessing it won't be enough to make a blip on the car companies' quarterly reports.

Isn't self-hosting a violation of most ISP EULAs?

I think so, if you have user-grade service, but I pay for a commercial-grade Internet connection that comes with a static IP for running services, and I run three hosted servers. Freedom isn't free (but it is a lot of fun). :)

Ever wonder if maybe that rule has less to do with bandwidth and more to do with preventing the creation of a peer-to-peer, decentralized internet?

I think there's some truth to that, if for no other reason than that the ISP probably would rather not have the headache associated with average idiots running servers. They're run by guys with MBAs who genuinely believe that centralized is inherently better -- like to the level that they don't even grasp what you're saying at first, if you try to explain the benefits of decentralized.

Anyone have other theories why this number is so much higher than the 5% of people who are just "late"?

The first window lasts from 0.08 years to 0.5 years, while the second window lasts from 0.5 years to 7.0 years. The relative window width is (7.0 - 0.5) / (0.5 - 0.08) = 6.5 / 0.42 = 15.47. So if each person only had zero or one debts, and no debt was ever paid off, you'd expect there to be 15.47 times as many debt holders in the second window as in the first. 15.47 * 5% = 77%. So the fact that it is at 35% means that there is some combination of people being in both categories and people paying off their debt while it is "In Collections." If it was 5%, or 77%, you'd be able to make a pretty solid guess that something was hinky, but 35% is in the "could be perfectly reasonable" range.

I'll also echo the sentiment that some creditors do a horrible job of billing. I had a large outstanding debt for years before finding it on my credit report. The company had a typo in my address from the original signup, but had been getting copies of my credit report which had my correct address. They sent all the bills to the incorrect address they had on file, never once contacted me at the address on file with the credit reporting company they had been contacting.

I can't find words for how much I hate Congress and the President for this.

I can. But I'm afraid that if I use them in public, I could be put on the secret watch list and have to face extra scrutiny in every LEO encounter when "possible terrorist, report to FBI" pops up on their computer.

Of course, that chilling effect means that the peaceful feedback mechanism that is supposed to moderate government overreach is being attenuated. When that moderation system is weakened, excesses grow. Fortunately, as The Declaration of Independence notes, "accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." So we have time.

But time grows short; The Declaration does not end with that phrase.

Decentralized Internet is badly needed

Very true, that is the only real solution to this problem. Whether corporations, governments, or criminals, the value in surveillance is too great to be resisted. The only solution is increasing the cost and detecting it when it happens. Decentralization will both make it more expensive to do generalized surveillance, and make it harder to do it without getting caught.

and nothing seems to be in works...

Not as true.

OwnCloud lets you host your own dropbox, mobile-to-desktop sync, etc.
MediaGoblin lets you host your own replacement for YouTube.
Asterisk lets you host an end-to-end encrypted replacement for Skype.
Tor and I2P let you slip past your ISP's surveillance net.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more at Stop-Prism.org.

Not to mention if chemical weapons were a casus belli, just about every country in the world would be a legitimate target.

Exactly. Like marijuana and copyright infringement for foreign policy.

Your government (I assume you are American) does provide foreign aid to Israel. It also supplies money and/or arms to a lot more unsavory countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Sure, feel free to criticize Israel, but don't be hypocritical about it.

Can you quote me the part where I was being hypocritical? Can you show me where I said that I supported our funding of Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Or are you just trying to falsely discredit me because you don't like my opinion?

Israel's not very efficient at committing genocide. Boko Haram in Nigeria has killed far more people. ISIS in Syria too. Etc.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a minor regional territorial conflict. But because of huge anti-Israel sentiment among UN members, combined with a healthy does of Islamic racism, this minor conflict that could have been settled years ago is kept festering because the Islamic bloc at the UN sees it as a useful tool to weaken Israel. It's pure cynical geopolitics fueled by Islamic fascism.

Not for me. For me, the problem is that my government arms Israel. I accept that many nations handle their regional bood-debt feuds with more bloodshed. It's stupid and self-propagating, but fine, go ahead, if that's your thing. But if you blow my paycheck on your cock-waving bullets, you become subject to my judgment of your actions.

Or, they could become less obstinate in blocking FOIA requests.

Why not have a herd of magical pink unicorns travel to DC and explain the problem to them. That seems like a more likely solution.

Here's my latest Snowden / Binney 2016 bumper sticker art, suitable for printing at 2.75" x 5" cropped size plus a .125" bleed, 300 DPI, on vinyl:
PNG
Vector (LibreOffice Draw)

This is my original artwork, CC BY-NC-SA, so print a pile and spread them around if you like. I use psprint.com, and I recommend searching "vinyl bumper stickers" on DuckDuckGo, where psprint is usually running a coupon in the search results. I haven't received the color proofs for this version yet, but these are corrected from a previous batch and should be pretty good.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo or PSPrint, and Snowden/Binney is (perhaps unfortunately) neither a real nor a realistic campaign. This is just for giggles.

When travelling from the UK to Chile... Flying is pretty much the only sensible option for me right now.
I pretty much hate the entire experience but there are not better alternatives for when you NEED to travel to some places.

When travelling in and around the UK I would never fly if I can avoid it as the entire experience has become pretty inconvenient.

Excellent -- it sounds like you are making all reasonable efforts to cut their cashflow.

>> There's also question of motivation. Why would soldiers waste expensive missiles for some irrelevant passenger plane?

> To shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft. They had already shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian fighter within the previous week. They were on a roll.

That's the same point looneycyborg was attempting to make; that it was not terrorism because it was not an attempt to target civilians.

Though I agree with your accurate and informative correction regarding the civilian flight route issue.

This is way out of Bob the arms dealer's league.

Bob9113 here. Don't tell my potential customers what I can and can't supply. You don't know my inventory, nor my procurement abilities. Though you are right that the price would be substantially above $50,000.